Hi,

I coach an 11 youth team but only one kid is 11 and the rest are 10. This means we are playing a lot of huge teams and my kids are getting discouraged. I really have some good players and guards that can handle the ball well. I need some advice on how to play against a bigger team.

Thanks

I have a small 6th grade girls team that I have coached since 4th grade. I tried to teach some many offenses in 4th grade and just became frusterated because nothing worked - then I started reading things from here and it clicked. In practice focus on fundamentals and come game time pressure the ball, play good defense, force turnovers and outrun the other team for layups. Stick with a motion offense to use when a set offense is needed. In 4th grade the girls won 2 or 3 games, last year over .500 and this year 4-1 to start. It's been an amazing transformation. We hope to play teams taller than us because they are usually much slower and we run circles around them.

Definately focus on FUNDAMENTALS...... winning is a by product of a fundamentally sound team. You have no control over size and talent...and what the other teams has or does not have ........... all you can do is get your kids ready to play... and then let them have some fun. Good luck.

I would try to spread the floor out as much as possible. This could give your smaller, quicker kids some room to move arround the giants. Try a nice 5 out set and see what happens. Good luck.

Thanks everyone for your good advice. We've started focusing on making sure our team knows how to run two good offensive plays and a good tight defense and just kept drilling that over and over. I keep telling my really small kids that they can harrass the daylights out of some of the bigger players and drive them crazy with their speed.

We do remind them to spread out but often forget to remind them in the middle of the game. I've got a few players on the team now that I put in charge when on the floor to make a quick check to make sure everyone is were they should be. We have a game tomorrow and we're hoping that what we have now focused on,(fundamentals), in practice will payoff and things will start turning around.

I'll let eveyone know how it went.

Thanks